Last day of Class at the Otabenga Jones Academy. Stay tuned for the exhibition of work and Commencement for our graduating students.
Pretty sad to be graduating from the OJ Academy of Applied Arts. I wonder if I can request an incomplete….
Haven’t Been Tumblring.
Lately I haven’t been tumblring. And its because I’ve been overwhelmed writing final papers. But I’ll be back with that heat in a week or two. And when I say heat I am referring to the burning hot Houston summer that is coming on.
I used to draw with a severely structured hand. It simply would not create the lines I wanted to see. Then I watched a child draw. Now every time I start to draw, I think of him. And now I draw what I wanna see. But my hand is still restricted in the sense that I must show reference, deference, & difference to that young boy.
Barron Clairborne (BC AFRICANUS) was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a self-taught photographer and began taking photographs at the age of ten after receiving a camera as a gift from his mother (Betty Lou). Clairbone works primarily in large format. In 19990, he moved to New York City. For the past three years, he has worked on a project which involved 8×10 Polarooids of the body, women (Venus Aurea saints and goddesses (Sanctified). The inspiration for his work is both historical and mythological. The symbolic imagery represents dreams, stories, and the oral traditions of his Southern and African ancestry.
Source: http://rbb85.wordpress.com/
The man is a genius.
(via blackcontemporaryart)
What does an upside down cross mean to you?
Personally, I understand and relate the upside down cross directly to St.Peter, who requested he be crucified upside down because he was not fit/not worthy to be crucified the same way as Jesus. Which is quite beautiful, if you really think about it. Unfortunately the upside down cross is riddled with all sorts of new ideology.
Cindy’s coming this summer… we can hardly wait!
Summer Exhibition Preview: Cindy Sherman at SFMOMA | The Daily Californian
So I seen this Cindy Sherman show while I was in New York last month. It was extremely packed because I was their on free Friday, but, it was good. There was so much more Sherman than I knew about. Also Cindy Sherman is so cute. Sexy, even. The way she shape-shifts and face-shifts is just unbelievable.
Demo Crazy
So as I mentioned before, my homework assignment for OTJAAA was to watch a curated selection of video clips, then select three quotes that stuck with us. I picked Fela Kuti’s break down of the word democracy. In which he goes “democracy, demo crazy, crazy demo, demonstration of crazy”. And for class, we are taking our quotes and trying to figure out what is the most effective way to make a sign with them. I took Fela’s statement a little farther, as you can see.
Long story short, I am making a really really big sign. But I made this while I was sitting because everyone else was drawing cool things and I can’t draw. My sister says its crazy I ended up with “demon castration”, but uh. So. Yea.
*video of Fela Kuti breaking it down in the post before this one
Fela Kuti on Colonial mentality (by alfredmadain)
So I have not yet mentioned that I was accepted to the Ota Benga Jones Academy of Applied Arts. Say hello to one of the students of the inaugural class(me). Yesterday we got our first homework assignment, which was watching and selecting quotes from a curated selection of videos for our upcoming Principles of Pan-African Design class tomorrow. Of all the videos, this was probably the most interesting to me.
The way Fela Kuti plays on words is actually very similar to the way I like playing on words and comparing sounds. As soon as he begins to sound out “democracy”, I knew what was going on.
Wanted poster for Angela Davis, 1970
Angela Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis emerged as a nationally prominent activist in the 1960s, when she was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Black Panther Party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of “Critical Resistance”, an organization working to abolish what she views as the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is the former director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music and social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons.<3
(via fridasexual)
